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The SkyTruth app that maps potential drillout scenarios across the landscape of Allegheny County, PA has officially received its first update! In an effort to make the experience more user-friendly, explanatory text and tips have been added. Our app has also been updated to remove from the drillout scenario areas such as major highways and the Pittsburgh International Airport, where drilling would obviously not take place.

A screenshot of the app when first initialized.

At the request of some users, we’ve also tabulated the results for the potential drillout scenarios by municipality. See the results in this table showing the number of occupied structures within two miles of a hypothetical drilling site, based on a given setback distance (in feet) and drilling site spacing (in acres), for every township and borough.

We were also asked to calculate the number of occupied structures located within 500 feet, and within two miles, of existing Marcellus Shale drilling and fracking sites. According to our analysis, 78 occupied structures fall within 500 feet of an active drilling site in Allegheny County and 67,673 occupied structures sit within two miles of an active drilling site. Recent scientific research has found human health impacts for people living within 2 miles of a drilling site.

Be sure to check out these insightful new updates for yourself. Give the app a try and let us know what you think by contacting Brendan at info@skytruth.org with any feedback you might have!

Last summer one of our interns, Jerrilyn Goldberg, put together an interactive story map detailing the impact hydraulic fracturing is having on the state of Pennsylvania. The map goes describes the fracking process and its associated risks, and how the growing industry is impacting local communities and the environment. She examines the proposition that switching to a natural gas dominated energy system would mitigate global warming, an important thing to consider when discussing future energy development. You can check out the story map by clicking the image below:

When thinking about fracking and its potential costs and benefits to society, it’s important to remember the impact it will have on the people living near it, not just the country as a whole. The industry touts the amount of potential energy that can be gained from a fracking well relative to its “small” footprint as a major advantage of the process over conventional gas wells and coal extraction. Wells can be permitted and drilled quickly, and with horizontal drilling a single well has access to a large area of potential gas reserves. This also means that wells can pop up at an alarming rate and fit into places that are uncomfortably close to where people live and work. Often times, these wells and their associated infrastructure are within sight and earshot of people’s homes, or even schools, hospitals, and other sensitive areas where people’s health can be put at risk by the 24/7 noise, lighting, diesel fumes, dust, and volatile chemicals emanating from typical drilling sites:

Here in western Pennsylvania we see how close fracking operations can come to people’s homes; the people living in the cluster of houses on the left have to live with the commotion around the well pads a stone’s throw away on a daily basis, and the massive fluid retainment ponds in blue could pose a threat to their health. Click on the image for a fullscreen version.

The story in West Virginia is very similar. Here a fracking well pad is less than a football field away from someone’s home. Click on the image for a fullscreen version.

Often times, many of the people that will be affected by a new fracking operation have little to no say in the matter. People are typically powerless to stop construction of a drilling site on a neighboring property, and don’t have any say in where and how the site and associated roads and utilities get built, even though they will still have to deal with the increased noise, light, and traffic, as well as decreased air quality. Health concerns are a major issue because fumes and volatile organic compounds (VOC’s) originating from well pads and fluid retainment ponds have been linked to respiratory and skin illnesses. Fracking operations have also been known to contaminate people’s drinking water by causing methane migration, posing an explosion hazard, and fracking fluids that have made it into the water table can render water unsafe for drinking, bathing, and even laundry. Accidents like fluid spills and well blowouts are an ever-present threat, with the potential to send thousands of gallons of fracking fluid spewing into the air and onto the surrounding landscape, as happened to a well in Clearfield County, Pennsylvania in 2010 that resulted in more than 35,000 gallons of fracturing fluid contaminating the environment. Local campers had to be evacuated from the area.

Hydraulic fracturing has really taken off in the last decade thanks to horizontal drilling technology. Here, in this section of southwestern Pennsylvania, we can see how rapidly fracking operations have expanded near the Pittsburgh area. The colored dots show the locations of new drilling sites similar to the ones shown in the images above, identified with help from our FrackFinder volunteers.

Because of its location over a particularly rich part of the Marcellus Shale, Pennsylvania has been one of the states most heavily impacted by the fracking boom, but fracking has begun to take off in other states as well. These include Ohio and West Virginia, where along with Pennsylvania you’ve helped us investigate and map drilling activity through our FrackFinder project to quantify the growing impact of fracking in each state, and make the data available to the public and to researchers investigating the impact of fracking on public health and the environment.

Ohio sits partially atop the Utica shale. This map shows the locations of well pads built between 2010 and 2013 in a small part of the eastern portion of the state, and the access roads that were carved out to support them. Click on the image for a fullscreen version.

Fracking is relatively new to West Virginia, and the topography is rugged (as shown by this shaded-relief map), so well pads aren’t yet spaced as densely as they are in states like Pennsylvania. The red polygons represent well pad construction, and the dark blue represent retainment ponds. Click on the image for a fullscreen version.

If you’d like to learn more about fracking and how it impacts people and the environment, be sure to check out Jerrilyn’s story map for an in-depth look!

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